Quiz: which fantasy writer are you?

Which fantasy writer are you?

The scale is 45 to -45. Here’s my scores.

9 High-Brow, -15 Violent, 15 Experimental and 5 Cynical!

Note that a -15 Violent actually means Peaceful.

And that means…

Philip Pullman

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Experimental and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.

Philip Pullman was already a prominent author of children’s books when he published his most praised work to date, the trilogy known as His Dark Materials (1995-2000). In this work, set both in parallel worlds and our own, Pullman made a courageous attempt to write a book for young readers which incorporated a whole vision of the universe, as well as a discussion of ethical issues. He managed to combine this with a burst of thought-provoking and entertaining imagination, bringing to life a Europe where the church is still in control, “souls” that have been externalised as animal presences, intelligent, sentient polar bears and much more. The series have been described as a sort of “anti-Narnia”, as Pullman’s attempt to write an updated variant of the kind of books C S Lewis, whom Pullman has criticized for having racist, misogynic and preaching tendencies, wanted to write. His Dark Materials has also spawned some controversy among Christians, who see the the work as an attack against Christianity, Pullman being one of Britain’s most outspoken atheists. Other Christians have, however, claimed to have found spirituality in the books.

Either way, Pullman’s combination of renewal and expansion of the genre, his profound messages on the value of life and his refusal to under-estimate his young readers’ ability to see life as it is makes Pullman one of the most interesting and important writers of modern fantasy.

I am delighted.

Surprised that I came out so peaceful, though. I think it’s because I am a strong believer in peace, which is why I write such violent stuff sometimes. So my work is often violent, but it’s in order to show the horror of violence.

By the way, my choice on the final question about “what should fantasy be, at its best” was: A label for stories that push the boundaries of what it’s possible to write about.

Question meme

From netmouse.

“The problem with Livejournal is that we all think we are so close, but really, we know nothing about each other. Hence, I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Then post this in your LJ and find out what people don’t know about you.”

So… ask. Something you think you should know, but don’t.

Go ahead, get eaten

I run a fast-paced flash fiction contest for the Codex writers’ group called Weekend Warrior. One of the top-placing stories this year was from Tina Connolly. I’m not surprised that it sold; it’s awesome. It’s at Brain Harvest, a great new sf/f flash fiction magazine.

Here, go read it. Hard Choices. It’s less than 750 words. And you might get eaten.

Diversity number-crunching

Since a few people asked how long it took me to do those stats: 133 characters took roughly 5 hours (some of which was fighting with Excel, which I’m not good at).

Aliettedb reports her results–172 characters took her about 2 hours. I guess she’s smarter than me. Marshallpayne1’s results for 107 characters took 3 hours.

So if anyone was thinking about trying this, but worried it’d take too long–it’s easier than it looks. If you’ve got a ton of stories, you could limit it to only the last two years or whatever makes sense to you. I didn’t count anything in my finished drafts, for example–just published and circulating stories.

Diversity statistics: a follow-up

This is a follow-up to my previous post analyzing the diversity of my stories.

Countesslovlace suggested looking only at my protagonists to see how diverse they were. Good idea. So let’s see.

Gender, Race, Sexual Orientation, Age, Class, and Ability by Protagonist.

40 protagonists. For aliens, I give their age as the approximate human equivalent. Remember that straight* means they show interest in the opposite sex, but we can’t rule out bisexuality.

45.0% female, 52.5% male, 2.5% other (machine)
30.0% Caucasian, 45.0% unknown, 15.0% people of color, 10.0% other (aliens, machine)
60.0% straight or straight*, 15.0% GLBT, 25.0% unknown
5.0% age 01-17, 52.5% age 18-35, 22.5% age 36-65, 10.0% age 66+, 10.0% other
25.0% upper, 25.0% middle, 45.0% working, 5.0% other
80.0% able or implied able, 20.0% disabled

I’ll also provide raw data so you can see how the characteristics line up with each other. I average 3.325 characters per story. (These are named characters and/or significant characters, not walk-ons.)

RAW DATA ON PROTAGONISTS

female, Native American, straight*, 18-35, working, able
male, Caucasian, straight, 36-65, upper, able
male, unknown, GLBT, 36-65, upper, able
female, unknown, straight, 18-35, middle, able
female, unknown, GLBT, 36-65, middle, able
female, Caucasian, straight*, 18-35, working, disabled
male, alien, unknown, unknown, upper, able
male, unknown, GLBT, 18-35, working, disabled
female, unknown, straight*, 18-35, working, able
female, Caucasian, unknown, 18-35, working, disabled
male, Caucasian, GLBT, 66+, middle, able
male, Caucasian, straight, 36-65, upper, able
male, Asian-American, unknown, 18-35, upper, able
male, unknown, straight*, 18-35, upper, able
female, unknown, straight*, 18-35, working, able
female, Caucasian, straight, 66+, middle, disabled
female, unknown, straight*, 18-35, working, able
male, alien, unknown, 18-35, working, disabled
male, unknown, straight*, 36-65, middle, able
male, unknown, unknown, 36-65, working, able
female, Hispanic, unknown, 18-35, upper, able
male, unknown, straight, 18-35, working, able
male, unknown, straight*, 36-65, middle, able
female, Caucasian, straight, 66+, middle, able
male, Caucasian, unknown, 18-35, middle, able
male, Caucasian, straight, 18-35, working, able
male, Caucasian, unknown, 0-17, middle, able
male, unknown, straight*, unknown, upper, able
male, alien, straight, 18-35, working, able
female, unknown, straight*, varies, varies, able
female, Caucasian, straight, 66+, working, disabled
male, African-American, unknown, 36-65, upper, able
female, Caucasian, GLBT, 18-35, working, disabled
male, Arab, straight, 36-65, working, able
female, unknown, straight, 18-35, working, disabled
female, unknown, straight*, 18-35, upper, able
male, unknown, straight*, 0-17, working, able
female, unknown, straight*, 18-35, middle, able
female, Asian, unknown, 18-35, working, able
other, machine, unknown, n/a, n/a, able

One story has no protagonist: Civilization.

Diversity statistics

I decided to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve said I’m committed to diverse characters in my fiction. Am I doing it?

I analyzed all of my published and circulating stories. I tracked six attributes:

1. Gender
2. Race
3. Sexual orientation
4. Age
5. Class
6. Ability/disability

I looked at 133 characters. Some of the classifications were tough. What class is a human girl trapped in a deer’s body? Is an alien in the bathroom faucet part of the working class? Are deities fully able, by definition?

Anyway. I did my best to sort it out, and here are the results.

1. GENDER

42.9% female
51.8% male
5.3% other (aliens, machines, divine beings)

Pretty straightforward.

2. RACE

The trouble here is that race is often not mentioned, especially if the protagonist is the narrator. I went solely with what’s written on the page (not what was in my head as the author). Very few racial indicators are explicitly mentioned, but sometimes they can be inferred from context and story. For example, a Polish Christian is reasonably likely to be Caucasian; an 11th century Islamic ceramics merchant is pretty likely to be Arab. “Unknown” means that there are no clues whatsoever about race in the text.

33.8% Caucasian
6.0% Asian/Asian-American
6.0% Divine
5.3% Alien
4.5% Native American
3.8% Arab/Arab-American
3.8% Hispanic
3.0% African/African-American
1.5% Machine
32.3% Unknown

Given that “white is the default” and many readers assume white characters unless told otherwise, here’s another way to look at those numbers:

66.1% white, actual or implied/defaulted
21.1% people of color
12.8% unclassifiable

I’m not saying that any character whose race goes unmentioned must be white. However, it’s worth noting that some readers will perceive the numbers this way.

3. SEXUAL ORIENTATION

While sexual orientation isn’t always explicit either, I found it easier to infer a character’s identity based on their thoughts. At least that’s true in my stories, which might be because I write about love and romance a lot. So here I have two kinds of straight: Straight which is “quite likely heterosexual”, and straight* which is “the character shows interest in the opposite sex, but we can’t rule out bisexuality.” Unknown means there’s no indication in any direction.

17.3% straight
31.6% straight* (could be bisexual)
9.0% GLBT
57.9% unknown

By the same logic as above (that many readers assume heterosexuality unless told otherwise) it looks like this:

91.0% straight
9.0% GLBT

If you’re curious, it’s 4 bisexual, 4 gay, 3 lesbian, and 1 transgendered character.

4. AGE

I thought I’d see if I was defaulting to young heroes and heroines, or representing a wider part of the population. Most ages were possible to infer from the text.

12.8% ages 0-17
42.1% ages 18-35
24.1% ages 36-65
5.3% ages 66+
6.8% n/a (mostly divine beings and machines)
6.0% unknown
2.9% varies (the story covers full lifetimes)

The number categories are somewhat arbitrary.

5. CLASS

I was surprised at how easy this was to infer from characters’ access to resources, regardless of what the story was about.

0.8% ruling class
21.8% upper class
17.3% middle class
44.2% working class
8.3% n/a (mostly divine beings and machines)
5.3% unknown
2.3% varies (the story covers full lifetimes)

These categories are nebulous. I just did my best to sort characters based on their jobs, living conditions, histories, and so on.

6. ABILITY

This category was tricky, because you can’t really say a character is fully able without knowing a lot about them. So there’s only two categories here.

88.0% able or implied able
12.0% disabled

The disabilities included cerebral palsy, deafness, mental illness, chronic pain, depression, social anxiety, limited movement, speech impediments, epilepsy, and others.

CONCLUSIONS

I’ll let you draw your own.

But here’s what I learned. Diversity matters. Reflecting the real world matters. Just the act of sorting all my characters increased my awareness of these issues. It brought up questions and assumptions in my mind. Is class a matter of income, lifestyle, or both? If I write sexual orientation clearly in my fiction and race not so often, does that reflect my own experience as a queer white writer or does it reflect inherent differences in the nature of those two “isms”? And on a side note, where the heck are all my Jewish characters? Maybe that’s just chance…

Anyway, I was surprised at how many working-class and disabled characters appeared in my fiction. I was also surprised at how few people of color and older characters populated my stories.

Overall, the number-crunching didn’t take very long (perhaps five hours), and it was well worth it for the learning experience.

I certainly don’t think writers should shove diversity in people’s faces. But there’s plenty of ways to give subtle cues that work very well. Like these:

Blatant bad example: “Johnny looked in the mirror. Yep. Still Mexican.”
Better example: “Johnny smelled home when he entered the kitchen. Only his mother’s cooking smelled like roast turkey, enchiladas, and horchata on Thanksgiving Day.”

I’ve heard the arguments that class/race/whatever is often irrelevant to a character in a story. Sure, that’s true sometimes. I hate stories where a character “needs” to be female (for example) simply because she must fall in love or get pregnant, and heaven help us if we have a female starship captain just for the heck of it.

But really, all these social elements influence a character’s outlook and interaction with the world. And while sometimes they aren’t explicit, they do influence the character’s experience. They’re part of that character and they deserve our respect as writers and readers.

Effectively, here’s what this means for writers: If you know your character’s background, you have a tool for making that character come to life in your story. If you don’t, that character will tend to reflect your own experience–and that’s often why characters come out flat or indistinguishable, rather than as individuals that readers love as real people. And for readers: Question your assumptions. Are you assuming that character is just like you? Did you stop to think about it?

Comments? Questions? Other stats I should try to pull from these numbers?